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"“(Visitors) should presume that all their communication devices are completely transparent for Russian security services.” "

Andrei Soldatov

Russian investigative journalist

Sochi security fears reached Olympian heights this week after reports surfaced that Russian authorities were searching for a suicide bomber believed to have infiltrated the city where the Winter Games will begin in just 16 days.

Yet critics also voiced a different concern: that some of Sochi’s unprecedented surveillance systems outstrip what is necessary to protect the Games from attacks, and seem designed to also sweep up the communications of journalists, activists and even athletes.

The extensive — some say invasive — security toolkit available to Russian authorities is capped off by a penetrating cyber-surveillance scheme.

Visitors “should presume that all their communication devices are completely transparent for Russian security services,” said Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist and editor of Agentura.ru, a security services watchdog website.

The U.S. State Department’s website for travellers to Sochi, reflecting the duelling concerns of privacy and security, caps off a section on terrorist threats with this “personal privacy note”:

“Travellers should be aware that Russian federal law permits the monitoring, retention and analysis of all data that traverses Russian communication networks, including Internet browsing, email messages, telephone calls, and fax transmissions.”

Sochi security will be enforced with drones, submarine-tracking sonar and thousands of closed-circuit televisions, Agentura.ru has reported. But the cyber-surveillance has drawn the most scrutiny.

On Wednesday, Soldatov gave a presentation to the European Parliament’s civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee in an effort to describe how the Russian communications interception network — the KGB-developed SORM — differs from those in western countries.

Russia’s federal security agency, the FSB (a successor to the KGB), does not have to produce a warrant in order to collect information from SORM, Soldatov told the Star a day earlier. As he and colleague Irina Borogan reported in October, in a joint investigation with Privacy International and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, SORM was rigorously updated for Sochi. Soldatov and Borogan also expect the FSB to use deep-packet inspection, which allows authorities to filter all electronic communications by keywords.

In November, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a resolution that explicitly allows authorities to create a database of visitors to Sochi and track their metadata, Soldatov said. It names journalists, athletes, judges, referees and team doctors, among others, as subject to the new provisions.

Soldatov believes the public nature of the November resolution was a warning to journalists and an effort to dissuade them from contacting and therefore exposing activists who might protest the Games.

Sports and news organizations were tight-lipped about their plans, if any, to protect communications while in Sochi. The Canadian and U.S. Olympic teams declined to comment to the Star. Spokespeople for the CBC, NBC, CNN and ESPN all either declined to comment or sent broad assurances that the security of their staff and infrastructure would be looked after.

But a representative of the Norwegian delegation said Team Norway had no protection systems in place. “We have been informed by our security adviser from PST (Politiets Sikkerhetstjeneste) that we should be aware that there might be monitoring of electronic communications. We are not worried about this, as we do not have secrets to hide. Our focus is preparations for sport competitions.”

“Despite assurances from President (Vladimir) Putin and other Russian government officials, OutSport Toronto recommends LGBT athletes and their allies, coaches, officials and spectators exercise caution in all activities and communication while in Russia.”

Experts recommend that travellers to Sochi who are concerned about electronic snooping bring “clean,” unused devices and discard them after returning home. That particularly holds true for reporters who have worked in sensitive regions such as Syria and who could expose contacts stored on their phones and computers.

Cyber-surveillance in Sochi is “more extensive than it has been at any of these events in the past,” said University of Victoria political scientist Colin Bennett, who has written a book on Olympic surveillance. This is part of an overall trend towards tighter and more expensive security at the Olympics, but is heightened by Putin’s “personal stake” in the Games’ success and Sochi’s proximity to the troubled Caucasus region, he said.

Bennett also noted that increased Olympic surveillance leaves a legacy: once the cameras, police force collaboration and surveillance networks are in place, they are rarely dismantled totally after visitors return home.

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